William Harry Rodick III

Harvard Wants to Know: How Does the Act of Making Shape Kids’ Brains?
By Katrina Schwartz
Through an initiative called Project Zero, Harvard is investigating the theory that kids learn best when they’re actively engaged in designing and creating projects to explore concepts. It’s closely aligned with the idea of design thinkingand the Maker Movement that’s quickly taking shape in progressive education circles.

Our last issue talked a great deal about gaming in education. This animated gif (Outlook 2007 users - and likely Webmail viewers - cannot see animated gifs. Click here to view it online) was created by a Kickstarter project for L.A. Gamespace, and along with their wonderful illustrations are many arguments for how gaming brings people together for learning.  

If your kids aren’t already playing mathematics games on Manga High, it’s a resource worth checking out. Students are exposed to games that help them build skills in a variety of math types. Following UK curriculum from years 3 to 11, Manga High motivates students with rewards, engagement, competition, goal setting, and scaffolding tutorials when they get stuck.
In fact, even if your kids are already familiar with it, you may not be aware of how you can use it to track their progress and target individual learning needs. Teachers can set games and goals for an entire class, or for a specific student. Additionally, kids can simply play on their own, and the teacher receives information about activity. 
*In Brasil, the site is in Portuguese.
Check out the video here.

“Since 1997, kids, teachers, librarians, and parents have enthusiastically turned to Funbrain for its free educational games, online books, and comics. Funbrain, created for kids ages preschool through grade 8, offers more than 100 fun, interactive games that develop skills in math, reading, and literacy. Plus, kids can read a variety of popular books and comics on the site, including Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amelia Writes Again, and Brewster Rocket.
Teachers and librarians can confidently encourage students to use Funbrain during their free time in class, assured that kids will enjoy an educational, safe online learning experience. Funbrain’s games help students build on what they have learned in class and acquire new skills in reading, math, and problem solving.
Parents can trust Funbrain to deliver a fun and safe experience for even the youngest children. The Playground helps parents introduce their preschoolers to the Internet and teaches them how to manipulate the mouse and keyboard. Selected by Family Fun magazine in its September 2010 issue as one of the top ten websites for kids, Funbrain is committed to providing a safe gaming environment that bridges learning and entertainment.”
*Geared to younger students


“Founded in 1999, BrainPOP creates animated, curricular content that engages students, supports educators, and bolsters achievement. Our award-winning online educational resources include BrainPOP Jr.(K-3), BrainPOP, BrainPOP Español, and, for English language learners, BrainPOP ESL. BrainPOP is also home to GameUp, a new, free educational games portal for the classroom.

“In traditional, blended, and “flipped” learning settings, BrainPOP supports individual, team, and whole-class learning. At school and in informal learning environments, our characters help introduce new topics and illustrate complex concepts. A great fit for mobile learning and BYOD classrooms, BrainPOP’s educational apps have been downloaded nearly 1.5 million times and lauded in countless reviews.

“All our resources are fully supported by BrainPOP Educators, our free teacher community. Our content is mapped to Common Core, aligned to academic standards, and searchable with our online Standards Tool. BrainPOP is easy to use, with no downloading, installation, or special hardware required.”

Unfortunately, Brain Pop is not a free resource, although some aspects of the site are, including some of their games, and they do have free trials. GameUp has games in mathematics (like Manga High), science, social studies, and health.
Check out the video here. 



”iCivics prepares young Americans to become knowledgeable, engaged 21st century citizens by creating free and innovative educational materials.
 
“In 2009, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded iCivics to reverse Americans’ declining civic knowledge and participation. Securing our democracy, she realized, requires teaching the next generation to understand and respect our system of governance. Today iCivics comprises not just our board and staff, but also a national leadership team of state supreme court justices, secretaries of state, and educational leaders and a network of committed volunteers. Together, we are committed to passing along our legacy of democracy to the next generation.
 
“In just two years, iCivics has produced 16 educational video games as well as vibrant teaching materials that have been used in classrooms in all 50 states. Today we offer the nation’s most comprehensive, standards-aligned civics curriculum that is available freely on the Web. You can see all that we’ve been up to in our latest annual report!”
*United States civics
Check out the video here. 

“Founded in 2004, Games for Change facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts.

“Unlike the commercial gaming industry, we aim to leverage entertainment and engagement for social good. To further grow the field, Games for Change convenes multiple stakeholders, highlights best practices, incubates games, and helps create and direct investment into new projects.”
*Jane McGonigal, a member of the board of directors, discusses Games for Change in her talk. 
Check out the video here. 

“Mindbloom Incorporated is a Seattle-based interactive media company that’s out to make life improvement accessible to everyone. By harnessing next-generation engagement techniques and focusing them on personal development, Mindbloom has created a new, powerful way for people to improve the quality of their lives. Utilizing behavioral science, personalized rich media, and fun social gaming techniques in their offerings Mindbloom makes the process of personal growth fun, simple and effective.

“Founded in 2008 by executive gaming producer Chris Hewett and early Amazon executive Brent Poole, Mindbloom has a large and rapidly growing user community, along with enterprise customers including Aetna™ and Sacramento State University, as well as research partnerships with UC Santa Barbara—Center of Health Game Research.”

Although Mindbloom seems to target adults, there could be an argument that it is our responsibility to teach children beyond subject-specific skills, to help them learn how to achieve healthy balance in their lives. 
Check out the video here.

There is no question that gaming is a big part of what kids do. Although we probably associate this with young boys, gamers are boys, girls, grown men, and grown women. Gamification, which Gabe Zichermann defines as “the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems,” is not exclusive to video games.
All around us, the world is gamified:

• Fitness programs (online tracking programs like Nike+ use gamification to motivate users by collecting information about fitness, helping users set and track goals, providing quick feedback on progress, and pushing information online to allow users to compete with friends and family for increased motivation)
• Resumes (professional social networking sites like LinkedIn push users to constantly stretch themselves as prospective employers, providing reminders and updates about areas for improvement and rewarding users with feeds and notifications for adding posts and connecting to other users; gamifying network expansion, users are constantly engaged in a progressive reward system)
• Driving (in-board dashes have grown so complex that some reinforce good driving choices, going so far as to provide benchmarks and rewards for driving ecologically)
• Sports fandom (perhaps sports is an area of life that didn’t need gamification, but there is no question that the advent of fantasy football, soccer, and baseball (evengolf!), has expanded user knowledge bases, which is oh so helpful on trivia night)
• Information sharing (social networking sites like Tumblr and Twitter, which have created a new meaning for the term “curator,” push users to collect and share quality content with the reward of increasing followership - which in some cases actually increases an individual’s revenue)
• Picture sharing (any user of Facebook feels reward when other friends “like” or comment on their posts and pictures)
• Schoology (Edmodo, Schoology, and other educational networking sites are branches of gamification in infancy - users get feedback, network, and even receive rewards, but feedback and motivation are dependent on teacher responsiveness)

*Click on pictures below to view videos
Gabe Zichermann explains more about what gamification is, and why older generations need to “go play.”


In her talk, Ali Carr-Chellman pinpoints three reasons boys are tuning out of school in droves, and lays out her bold plan to re-engage them: bringing their culture into the classroom, with new rules that let boys be boys, and video games that teach as well as entertain. She discusses the disconnect boys have with the education system stating, “Video games are not the cause. Video games are a symptom. They were turned off a long time before they got here.” Her point? We need to find them - not the other way around.


Jane McGonigal explains how games can change the world, and as a game designer, introduces the games she has created to help kids become socially aware. 


Is there value to using the motivational benefits of gaming in our curriculum? 

How Self-Compassion Can Help Prevent Teacher Burnout 
Vicki Zakrzewski

Vicki Zakrzewski provides tips for keeping cool and being kind to yourself, even in the midst of a stressful situation.

“With the burnout issues teachers face, taking care of themselves through work/life balance is important, but it isn’t enough,” says Neff, “Teachers need to give themselves permission to be self-compassionate for the stress they’re under.”

Back in our fifth issue, I talked about how amazing Teaching Channel is as a resource for inspiring engaging lessons.Leonardo Botaro, our mathematics teacher, has found ways to literally do a song and dance for his students while motivating their learning. Here are two videos that he found inspirational:

Marlo Warburton on silly songs


Alex Kajitani on integer rapping


I could think of maybe three teachers that I have ever encountered who could incorporate this type of singing and dancing into their classroom and make it work, and Leo is certainly one of them. Such is the beauty of Teaching Channel - there are all kinds of resources and videos full of ideas that can work for every type of teacher with every type of style - all while still relating curriculum to standards-based learning and student engagement. Check outTeaching Channel today to find your inspiration. 

Do you like the idea of sharing resources with other teachers through social networking? The IB virtual community has been created in collaboration with ePals to offer IB stakeholders the ability to connect, communicate and collaborate with one another. Tools offered within the IB virtual community include blogs, wikis, discussion forums, file uploading (documents, images, audio and video), individual profiles, the ability to form groups and other social networking functionality. Check the video below for an introduction.

explore-blog:

You want to slow the spread of AIDS? Educate a girl. You want to slow population growth? Educate a girl. You want to grow the global economy? Educate a girl. So, what exactly changes when the 600,000 girls in the developing world get a good education?

Everything.

Some stirring statistics in this trailer for Girl Rising, a moving documentary about the impact of educating girls worldwide.

At a time when even in the “developed” world the gender gap in academia gapes wide, what could be more important? Even Einstein knew that.

Help support the project with a donation – for the cost of an average New York City dinner, for instance, you can cover the school feels for one girl for an entire year.

(↬ Design Observer)

Off to a slow start a few years ago, IB Blogs is now steadily expanding with regular contributions from IB experts and community members sharing ideas on practice, news, conference information, funding opportunities, and more.
Primary Years Programme Blog
Regularly posts directly from the Primary Years Programme development team, this blog keeps the community updated on everything PYP.
Sharing PYP Practice
Search through the archives of this blog and become inspired by this plethora of PYP curricular practice. 
IB Funding Opportunities
Check this blog regularly for information about scholarships and grants directly applicable to IB practice.

Does the idea of vying for grant money interest you? Look into IB’s Jeff Thompson Research Award. If you’re tentative about grant writing to access innovative resources for your classroom or the school, I’d be happy to help you through the entire process.

Teachers’ Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform

Spiegel looks back on studies regarding teacher efficacy and its influence on student performance. The article includes a guide by Robert Pianta on seven ways teachers can regulate expectations. 

TedEd videos are not new, and the short animated versions of educational talks springboarding from Khan Academy and flipped classrooms theory have been capturing the imaginations and interest of inquiring students everywhere. They have now expanded, and with a library of 138 videos, teachers have had plenty to be excited about, especially since they are encouraged to use these videos to create flipped lessons which are then available to their peers.

Learn how to use and create as a part of the TedED community here.

ClassDojo is a classroom tool that helps teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It also captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators. Check out the video below for more information.

ClassDojo is currently free, although that may change soon. They say that it will remain forever free for early adopters, so if this is a system for you, get your account now!

Do you notice that your students don’t have the extended focus that was expected of us when we were students? The Open University has created a compendium of six animated videos that explain incredibly complex theories within one minute each. Can a cat be both alive and dead? Can a computer think? How does a tortoise beat Achilles in a race?

Here, David Mitchell narrates this explanation of the twin paradox and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The d.school, one component of Stanford’s Design Program, is one of the most sought after programs for building creativity and innovation. Students from all across Stanford’s schools - business, law, engineering, etc. - seek entrance to the program to find ways for building the type of thinking that will assist them in solving problems in their main programs. Major companies also bring their staff to the d.school, hoping to stretch the innovative capabilities of their organizations. 
As you may have heard, Stanford is a bit difficult to get into, but the d.school’s methods are not exclusive to Stanford students and rich companies. Enter the Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking. 


“We know not everyone can make a trip the d.school to experience how we teach design thinking. So, we created this online version of one of our most frequently sought after learning tools. Using the video, handouts, and facilitation tips below, we will take you step by step through the process of hosting or participating in a 90 minute design challenge.”
This is exactly what I intend to do at one point this semester. If you are interested in helping me present this workshop to students, please let me know! At the moment, I will go through the crash course at some point with 10th graders, but if there is additional interest from any teachers, we can expand that to include other grades. Check out the site and let me know what you think!

Hank Green, the show’s creator and star, explains incredibly complex scientific ideas in simplistic and entertaining ways. Do you want to learn how to make a lemon battery; how to sort through seemingly contradictory studies about Antarctic warming; why diseases are scary and which ones make us zombies; why we age and how we can stop it; or how something completely mindboggling, like jumping from the “edge of space,” is possible? 

In this video, Hank discusses the science of dreaming.


If you really like Hank, he has covered a good deal of internet real estate, and as one of the famous Vlogbrothers, Hank and his bestselling novelist brother, John, also create videos about biology and history.

“The Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL) and Steve Hargadon are pleased to announce the inaugural virtual and worldwide School Leadership Summit, Thursday, March 28th, 2013. This free conference will be held online and will be a unique chance to participate in a collaborative global conversation on school leadership with presentations by your peers. It is being co-chaired by Steve Hargadon, whose virtual educational conferences had over 100,000 attendee logins last year.
To be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please join the Admin 2.0 network and conference website. Conference strands (aligned to the internationally-recognized ISTE National Education Technology Standards for Administrators) will include the leadership topics:
Vision in a Changing World
Teaching and Learning in a Changing World
Professional Learning in a Changing World
Data-driven Reform in a Changing World
Ethical and Responsible Use in a Changing World

C.G.P. Grey is known for being able to explain incredibly complicated things in a way that almost anyone can understand. Does this sound like something you could use for some of your students? Known for his witty style, internet fans have turned to C.G.P. to understandthe electoral college, find truths behind historical misconceptions, understand distinguishingfeatures of insects, and know for certain whether or not Pluto is a planet. Unrestricted by subject area, C.G.P. really does explain everything.

In this video, he discusses the future of education, using one of its oldest professors - Aristotle - and technology.

Clinical Designs Advancing STEM Teacher Preparation and Linked Learning 
March 7  03:30pm (PT)

“Join us for an interactive presentation and discussion on successful strategies for advancing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the Linked Learning secondary approach in clinical teacher preparation. Examples of STEM-rich elementary schools, middle school math and science teacher preparation, and High School Linked Learning partnerships will be highlighted. This is the third webinar in a series held in collaboration with California State University and WestEd.”

Presenters:

Babette Benken

Associate Professor and Math Education Graduate Advisor, Mathematics and Statistics
California State University, Long Beach

Nancy Farnan

Interim Associate Dean, College of Education
San Diego State University

Paula Hudis

Director, Pathway and Curriculum Development at ConnectEd
The California Center for College and Career

Arlene LaPlante

Director for the ConnectEd Network at ConnectEd
The California Center for College and Career

Carolyn Nelson

Interim Dean, College of Education
California State University, East Bay

Jared Stallones

University Coordinator, Single Subject Credential Program
California State University, Long Beach

Brad Stam

Vice President
ConnectEd - CA Center for College & Career

Nader Imad Twal

Smaller Learning Communities & Linked Learning Project Director
Long Beach Unified School District

Every nook and cranny on the internet contains experts in one area or another, and the accessibility to creative minds can really benefit a teacher’s planning book. In this section, I would like to introduce you to freely available, expertly designed video archives that you may like to include in your instruction. And here are some others that I have shared in the past: Smarter Every Day, IBTV, Minute Physics, and YouTube for Schools. For the experts featured here, please view the videos entirely before showing them to your students.  

Vi Hart

Before becoming a Khan Academy expert, Vi Hart made videos for the YouTube community, and she also maintains a blog. This “mathemusician” takes the normal wonderings of a doodler in math class, or the natural connections between math and music, and makes entertaining (although somewhat rapidly narrated) videos that ask the audience to play.

In this, one of her more popular videos, Vi Hart looks at spirals, Fibonacci numbers, and plants.